


Ramblin' Man

by verdenal



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-22
Updated: 2012-05-22
Packaged: 2017-11-05 20:36:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/410763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verdenal/pseuds/verdenal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Lucifer's back in his cage and Dean's where he thinks he ought to be, Cas comes by with a job he can't refuse. (s5 postscript.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Things were rough with Lisa, at first, but for whatever reason she seemed to think being with him was worth putting up with the fact that he would lay out salt lines without thinking and only slept four hours a night, and, yeah, waking up to the same person for months was strange for Dean, but it was his last promise to Sam and he didn’t exactly mind having what he wanted for once.

So they muddled along and Dean thought that maybe things would work, and then May came, blowing past April with bright sun and flowers and Sam’s birthday. With the exception of those four years Sam spent in California, Dean had been there for every one of his birthdays, and though the Winchesters never made a production out of, well, anything, it mattered. And it mattered that Sam wasn’t there, so Lisa left him alone after the second gruff dismissal and Dean and Jack Daniels celebrated the day together.

He’d been expecting strange dreams but when Lisa woke him with urgent hands all he could think was “Goddammit,” but he was still wary of taking the Name in vain so he held his tongue and tried to remember how to breathe. His lungs still felt heavy with blood and his shoulders ached from where he had hung. Lisa’s eyes were brown and wide with worry, but all he could tell her was “Hell.”

Over the bathroom sink he hung his head and quietly tried not to retch. It wasn’t coincidence and he knew, had May the second carved into his bones next to those Enochian symbols, but if he had four months of this lying ahead of him someone upstairs was going to be hearing about it. 

He still had no truck with prayer, though, and Lisa’s knock at the door brought him back to bed. She whispered something that sounded like an apology as he drifted off to sleep, but her voice faded when another filled his head. 

“I thought we put you back in your cage.”

“Yes,” Lucifer agreed, wearing a refurbished Nick, “you did lock us up.”

Fuck. Michael. 

“It’s real cute that you two managed to set aside your differences. I didn’t know Hell offered couple’s therapy.”

“You seem to forget that my brother and I were cut from the same cloth,” a voice from behind him said.

Michael had, for reasons Dean could probably guess, decided to appear as John Winchester, circa 1973. He and Lucifer stood on either side of Dean, calm, menacing forces.

“So what exactly is this? Revenge? Because there are a lot of people you could blame for ending up in the Pit.”

Michael’s smile was something Dean never wanted to see again.

“No,” Lucifer answered. “But now that there is no angelic influence around you,” and Michael smirked, “you’re free to remember. Dean,” he said, earnest and eager in the way Sam had described him, “you went to Hell. Nothing can erase that from you. Not ever.”

Well, who was he to disagree with an archangel. Hell, two archangels.

So it went on, and after the third week he had stopped screaming and after the sixth Lisa had stopped looking at him when she thought he wasn’t looking. Functioning on little to no sleep was nothing new to him, so he was still able to work his shitty mechanic’s job and take Ben places on the weekend and have the apple pie life he’s always wanted during the day.

At night, of course, he returned to Hell. 

The whole thing had actually gotten a little repetitive, since he had already lived through it once. Which was why, when he woke up three months later with Alistair’s face grinning down at him and the hooks free of his shoulders he knew exactly what was happening the next night. He told Lisa he had to work late, found Jack and rented a motel room on the outskirts of town.

He still got complaints about the screaming. Lucifer had been particularly thoughtful with these last ten years, allowing Dean to somehow simultaneously torture and watch himself torture. It was exquisite, and as someone who was once in the business, Dean had to admire it.

“Dean,” Lisa said when he came back, more hangdog than he’d ever looked in his entire life, he was sure.

“Lisa, look,” he started but the hurt deep in her eyes cut him off. “It’s Hell. I can’t stop dreaming about Hell, and I probably never will.”

“Oh, Dean,” and she slid her hand up his arm, up, but before she could slot her hand over the brand Dean pulled away.

“No,” he said, more thinking to himself than anything else, “not yet. Don’t grip me there yet.”

“Yet?”

“That’s, that’s where I was pulled up, the last time.” She still looked troubled, but Dean shrugged and stepped into her space, curled his hand around the back of her neck and tried to forget. Lisa melted into him, warm and forgiving.

Not, of course, that forgiveness had anything to do with it.

On September eighteenth, Dean woke up with a restlessness underneath his skin, and for the first time in months he went through the day trying to sleep. When he finally did succumb, with Lisa curled beside him in post-coital afterglow, he pushed and shoved at the fabric of time within the dream, but his hands never sped up as they sliced through human flesh. The last soul he had ever laid into was a middle-aged man, whose arms had been corded with muscle and whose screams had been long in coming.

When he woke he kept his eyes closed, afraid to look over and find Lisa gone, Ben gone, the whole house dissolved back into a horribly patterned motel room, and—

“Cas?”

He looked up and, yes, there was Cas, standing over him in that ridiculous ensemble, still gripping Dean tight. Cas opened his mouth to say something, but Lisa woke up and screamed, and her scream brought Ben running, and then Ben panicked, and Castiel just stood there, staid as always, his hand flat on Dean’s shoulder.

Once everything had quieted down Dean swallowed and said, “So, uh, this is Cas. He, uh, pulled me out the first time.”

“Heaven has always been overly fond of symmetry,” Cas said, and let go with what Dean would have called a grin if he hadn’t known him. Dean rose with a kiss to Lisa’s temple and shepherded Ben back to his room with a promise of “I’ll tell you in the morning.” Castiel watched with a look that was almost fond.

In the kitchen Dean manfully refrained from pouring himself another glass of Jack; Lisa had finally brought up his less than subtle dependency on drinking. Cas gave him the same flat, wide-eyed stare that he had for two years and Dean finally felt like he knew what was going on.

Well, actually, he didn’t. But at least this was a side of Cas he knew, the mechanical angel side, and that only meant one thing. “What do you need me to do?”

“Nothing,” Cas told him, with another quirk of his lips. “I was not lying when I told you Heaven enjoyed symmetry.”

“Couldn’t your, uh, etchings” Dean gestured to his ribs, “have stopped Lucifer from finding me?”

“They do.” Cas told him, and when Dean didn’t respond, he continued, “Neither Lucifer nor Michael will be able to actually find your body, but Lucifer does have a point.”

“Oh, good. Satan has a point?”

The contemptuous look Castiel gave Dean was comforting in its familiarity. “While I did restore your body and soul,” he emphasized that word, Famine’s words still buried in both of their minds, “Lucifer is right. His touch is something greater than anyone could fully scrub from you.”

“So he’s always going to be in the back of my head? I thought that was,” Dean trailed off. It had been Sam’s job, and of all the things Dean didn’t speak of Sam was first.

“Only during those months you were dead. He can’t do anything to you now, certainly not with me here.”

“The angelic influence,” Dean said.

“You could call it that.”

“Okay. Seriously, man, what is up with you? You’re acting all,” Dean waved a hand in Castiel’s general direction, “I don’t know, human, what with all the facial expression.”

“Gabriel said it would be more convincing.”

“Gabriel?”

Castiel shrugged. “With Michael gone, Heaven was a bit short on archangels. Besides, Gabriel passed the test, too.”

“Right, right, whatever.” Dean paced around the kitchen. “Convincing of what? I thought you said Heaven didn’t have any more dirty jobs for me.”

“We don’t,” Castiel told him. “But there is something I thought you might be interested in doing.”

“What?” Dean decided that this actually merited a drink, poured himself one and figured he’d explain everything to Lisa in the morning.

“Sam,” Cas began and in the long pause between his words Dean drained the glass and poured another, “Would you help me find Sam?”

Dean found that even if he opened his mouth he couldn’t talk without tears pricking at the corners of his eyes so he just shut up and stared at Cas in a way that indicated that he wanted a fucking explanation, immediately.

“I am…concerned for Sam,” Cas said and Dean’s hackles went up instantly. The last time anyone in Heaven had been concerned for or with Sam, he’d been drinking demon blood like it was his job.

“Cas,” Dean started and continued even though his voice was wet and choked, “don’t you dare tell me that Lucifer’s walking around out there in Sam’s skin. Just don’t.”

“No,” Cas said slowly, looking at Dean as though he were mad. “Lucifer is back in his cage, I know. And I hope you would too.”

“Then what’s the problem?” Of course, Dean had a thousand scenarios, nightmares he’d been hoarding since he was four, a meticulous catalog of every awful thing that could ever happen to his baby brother.

“While we may know that Sam is entirely himself, it is unlikely that other hunters do. You two are not popular with them, if I recall.”

“No, Cas, starting the Apocalypse doesn’t really make you many friends.” Dean finally sat, head in his hands as he concentrated on just breathing, letting himself fall back into the rhythm of the hunting life. “You knew,” he said after a moment, accusing, “you knew that I’d go with you if you just said Sam’s name.” And, okay, Dean realized that wasn’t exactly a revelation; everyone who’d ever met the brothers Winchester knew that they had gaping blind spots shaped like each other, but Dean had hoped, hoped that maybe the long months would dull that ache, the ache of knowing that he would leave the life he’d always wanted, and still wants, and will probably always want, if Sam needed him. It had always been Sam.

“Dean,” and the frustration in Cas’s voice was a small victory, “shut up.”

He laughed a little, a broken sound in the back of his throat. “Did Gabriel teach you to be this sassy?” And, god, he had thought he was done with that period of his life where he called angels sassy.

“No. That would have been you and Sam, actually.”

“Oh,” and Dean could see Cas charging up for some huge diatribe that just was not capable of dealing with at the moment. “Look, Cas, help me load up the car and I’ll leave in the morning.”

He didn’t get up, though, and Castiel touched the top of his head with two fingers. The feeling of peace settling into his skin reminded him of the Apocalypse days, but he didn’t complain.

They packed the Impala in total silence, which bothered Dean not at all, since any talking would just have distracted him from the overwhelming guilt. He had tried to explain his relationship with Sam to Lisa, but there was no good way to say, “My brother and I are kind of disgustingly codependent,” especially not to the woman you were living with. Dean had tried. 

When he came back to their room, Lisa was up, reading. She set the book down in her lap, one of Dean’s Vonneguts, and looked him in the eye. “So,” she said, “that was Cas.”

“Castiel, bona fide angel of the Lord.”

“What was he doing here? I thought you said it was over, Dean.” She didn’t sound angry, just sad, and all the excuses he had drained out of him.

“Cas, he, well, he wants me to help him find Sam.” And, yes, Dean’s voice broke over Sam’s name, the one syllable he had never allowed past his lips since the world didn’t end.

“Your brother’s alive?”

“Apparently. Cas wouldn’t lie about something like that.” He lay down next to Lisa, and she moved to pillow her head on his chest, and for moment they lay together like that, until Lisa looked up at him and asked,

“When are you leaving?” Dean wanted to protest, but here she was giving him an out and Dean rarely got such perfect opportunities to be a coward.

“In the morning. I’ll probably stop at Bobby’s first, ask if he’s heard anything.”

“Even if you hadn’t? You and your brother seemed so close.” Dean had to fight a snort at that, the understatement of the century. “Would he really not tell you he was okay?”

“Probably thinks he’s doing it for my own good,” Dean laughed, dry.

“Maybe it is.”

“Lisa,” Dean started, and maybe the out had been more like an opportunity to dig himself into the second-deepest hole he’d ever been. “Lisa, he’s my brother.”

She didn’t say anything to that, and Dean fell asleep what felt like hours later, his hand still in her hair.

 

Dean woke up at eight, later than he’d expected to, but still early enough that Lisa’s absence surprised him. Of course, she was waiting for him in the kitchen, and Ben, too, seated at the table. They both turned to look at him when he came in, and Lisa gave Dean a worn smile.

“Where are you going?” Ben asked. Dean recognized that tone, the same vaguely accusatory one Sam had used on their father before he learned where exactly John went when he said he had to go work. Sam had hated being lied to; when Dean’d finally spilled the beans Sam didn’t talk to him or John for three weeks.

“To find my brother,” Dean explained, around the lump in his throat. “D’you remember Sam at all?”

“He’s alive?” Ben perked up.

“Yeah,” Dean said. “Yeah, he is.” It hit him then, and he couldn’t help smiling: he was going to find his little brother.

“You’re gonna come back, though, right?” Ben asked, giving Dean a wary look.

“Of course,” Dean said, as much to Lisa as her son.

After that he didn’t feel quite so bad about helping himself to the bacon she was making, and the three of them had settled into an almost normal round of morning chatter when Cas popped into the kitchen. Lisa screamed and Ben dropped his bacon on the floor, where Dean gave it a look and then promptly remembered that he was no longer in the phase of his life where the five second rule was really appropriate, or necessary.

“Time to go?” He asked.

“Yes,” Cas agreed. “It will take several hours to reach Bobby’s, at least.”

“Right, right.” Dean said as he rose. Ben hugged and Dean rested a hand on the boy’s head.

When he’d been freed from that embrace, Lisa moved towards him and slid one hand along his jaw. Dean could smell her shampoo, something green and fresh, and moved to kiss her. Instead, she moved away and brought he r other hand up to face, and stroked her thumbs along his cheekbones. She opened her mouth to speak and then Dean did kiss her, quick and ravenous because he knew exactly what she was going to say and it wasn’t something he knew how to hear.

“Dean,” Lisa started when he pulled away, but he was already heading towards the doorway, and Cas was this vaguely irritated and probably amused figure off to his side, and it was very, very easy to fall back into the pattern of leaving that he had perfected years ago.

“I’m sorry.” He meant it, too, said it while looking straight into her eyes but it didn’t make his exit any less of a flight.

Outside, though, Dean could breathe, finally. The purr of the Impala’s engine hadn’t changed in her months spent trapped in suburbia. His tapes were still there, in the same haphazard groupings they had been for years. It wasn’t as though Dean hadn’t driven since the end of the world, because he certainly had, but he hadn’t gone anywhere. He wasn’t used to permanency, to returning to the same place day and day out. He wasn’t sure he’d ever be.

In the passenger seat, Cas made an aggravated noise in the back of his throat.

“Alright, Jesus, we’re going! Uh, sorry about that. Old habits, you know.”

“I’m sure.”

Dean flicked on some AC/DC and they rode in a companionable silence for about an hour, until he looked down and saw the gas gauge dangerously close to empty. Of all the things he had remembered to get the night before: his old duffel full of clothes, the shotguns and the silver, the pounds of salt and an emergency batch of holy water, bibles and weird ritual weapons, and, of course Ruby’s knife, he had forgotten gas.

“Fuck. Hey, Cas, I’m gonna have to stop at the next gas station.”

“Alright.” Cas didn’t even turn at the announcement. He kept staring out the open window, his hair moving a little bit in the breeze. It was warm for September, and outside green and golden waves of corn rippled and fairly shone in the sunlight. For miles around Dean could see nothing but road and swaying stalks, and a kind of peace settled in the air, until on the horizon a gas station loomed.

Dean filled up the Impala and made small talk with the man behind the counter in the way he had his entire life, calm and easy, with something common in him brought to the forefront, the dust creased in his boots or the calluses worn into his palms. Not once did he glance in the car to see if Castiel was still there.

When he slid back behind the wheel he glanced over, and Cas was there, staring back at him.

“Don’t you have, you know, heavenly duties to get back to?”

“You would prefer I left?

Dean didn’t really know how to reply to that.

“I had assumed you would want company,” Cas explained.

“It’s not that I don’t want you here, Cas, but I don’t get it. You never rode with us before when you could zap yourself around.”

“No,” Castiel admitted, “I did not. And I will admit that I find this method of transportation confining.” Dean opened his mouth the defend the Impala, but Cas continued, “But I doubt that you would enjoy this trip alone.” Again, he stopped Dean from replying. “God does not mind that I am…fond of you and your brother. He finds it encouraging.”

“Encouraging? I thought you got your leash tightened last time they though you were fond of one of us mud monkeys.”

Castiel glared. “Uriel and Zachariah’s opinions are far from the word of God. Things in Heaven are changing. The angels are changing. I am no longer considered an embarrassment.”

“They thought you were an embarrassment? And you still went back?”

“Embarrassment is perhaps not the right word. The Enochian does not translate well to your language. Aberration, perhaps?”

“Doesn’t make it any better, Cas.”

“As I said, that term is no longer applied to me.” That seemed to close the matter, as far as Dean could tell, since Cas thinned his lips and turned his head to watch the corn go by again. The wind against his cheeks probably was the closest Cas could get to flying or zapping or whatever while caged in the Impala.

“Bobby’s, then?” Dean offered with a conciliatory shrug, and he was pretty damn sure he saw Cas smile.


	2. Chapter 2

When Bobby finally opened to door, after five minutes of Dean knocking and swearing, the first thing he did was shut it right back in their faces. Actually, he said, “No way am I gettin’ caught up in this shit again,” first. It took Dean another two tries and a face full of holy water to convince Bobby that they weren’t going to draft him into The Apocalypse, Round Two.

“Then what do you want?” Bobby asked. “Not that I’m not glad to see you, but I figured you were still settling in with Lisa.”

“I was,” Dean stopped. “Have you?” 

“Have I what?”

“Sam,” Dean blurted, and the name hung in the air, as much of a presence as Sam was when he had been there, huge and skulking around the house or researching or bitching at Dean or doing any of the million little things people do throughout the day.

“What about Sam?” Bobby’s voice got the edge it always did when he thought something or someone (Dean) had fucked up.

“Cas thinks he’s alive.”

“Dammit, Dean. I know you’re a fool for your brother and almost as much of one for that angel of yours,” and at that Cas, who had been content to sit on Bobby’s counter and watch Dean flounder, made a noise of protest, “but your brother fell into the Pit.”

“And he has somehow climbed back out,” Castiel said.

“So he’s—”

“No. Lucifer is still in his cage. In all likelihood, God freed Sam from Hell.”

“And you’re telling me that Sam came back to life and just decided not to tell anybody? That doesn’t sound like Sam.”

“Bobby,” Dean started, “you know Sam’s an idiot. If he thinks I have this perfect, white picket fence and dog kinda life, he’s going to go martyr himself for it.”

“Alright, point. But he hasn’t come round to see me either.”

“Well, Samantha’s always needed time alone with her feelings.” And Dean knew that he sounded like he was rationalizing, but everything he said was true. He needed it to be true, yeah, but it also happened to be God’s honest truth.

“Dean,” Bobby sighed, in the way that Dean knew meant he was going to give in but didn’t like it, “I don’t know anything about Sam, but I’ll call Rufus, and Jake out on the West Coast, and a couple of hunters I know down South and see if anyone’s heard about Sam. There’s some cars out there that could use your attention, if you happen to be feelin’ guilty about crashing.”

“Aw, thanks Bobby.” But as Dean moved to go out to the salvage yard and get back in Bobby’s good graces, Castiel cleared his throat.

“It would be wise if you talked to as few people as possible, Bobby.” Before Bobby could give Cas the piece of his mind he was clearly preparing to, the angel continued. “I choose to intervene in this affair because I feared other hunters would not be so…sympathetic to Sam’s predicament.”

“You think they’re hunting Sam.”

“Look, Bobby,” Dean jumped in, “it’s not that far-fetched. I mean, Gordon was hunting us before we even really started the Apocalypse. And it was hunters that killed me and Sam when we went to Heaven. So if word got out that Sammy had come back from Hell,” Dean trailed off there with a shrug and Bobby rolled his eyes.

“Fine, I’ll only call Rufus. He knows how to keep his mouth shut.”

Cas vanished after that, and Dean dicked around with some decrepit Ford until Bobby came out and coughed. “Look, son, I’m sorry, but”

“It’s fine, Bobby,” Dean cut him off. “If no one knows, it means no one’s hunting him.”

“Hopefully. Are you sure Cas is right, though?”

“About?” 

“Not about Sam being the Devil, you idjit, about the rest of the angels not having any interest in this.”

“Oh.” Dean let out a breath he pretended he wasn’t holding. “I trust Cas, Bobby,” Dean said with his chin tilted up, a challenge.

“Alright.” Bobby shrugged but didn’t argue. “So, where are you gonna look?”

-

After a week of thinking and checking for omens and one incredibly tense fight between Dean and Bobby that ended with Dean’s hands shaking the way they had when he once sided with Sam against their father, Dean and Cas headed for California first, because while Dean didn’t think Sam would settle himself there, it was also the last place Dean wanted to look so he figured he’d look first. He called Zach and Becky from that fucking Saint Louis shapeshifter affair, and they gave him a list of Sam’s friends who were still out in California. Luckily, they had been pretty keen on helping him, since Dean didn’t really want to have to mention how much trouble that case had eventually caused them, though, really, the FBI? Had nothing on Lucifer.

California was sickeningly pleasant for late September. The first people on Dean’s list were Katharine and Joseph DeWitt. According to Becky, they had gotten married during Dean’s first last year on earth, and Sam had met them through Jess. He imagined they had held joint dinner parties or something else equally middle-America and nauseating. 

Katharine was an Amazon of a woman, taller than Cas, who had gone back to Heaven once they crossed the California border, so the smile in her eyes was practical level with Dean’s stare when she opened the door. “Can I help you?”

“I sure hope so.” Dean smiled, the same good ol’ boy smile he gave every witness and every victim’s mother across America. “I’m Dean Winchester,” that part was new, being himself for once, “and I was wondering if you’d heard from my brother recently.”

“Sam?” Her eyes got wide and excited. “You’re Sam’s brother? He talked about you like you were the only person he’d ever known.”

“You’d be surprised,” Dean muttered, but he couldn’t help grinning up at her.

“Has something happened? Is Sam okay?”

“As far as I know, but I haven’t seen him in months.”

“Oh my God,” Katherine breathed out and covered her mouth with a hand. “I’m so sorry, but I haven’t seen him since, since Jess.”

“That’s okay,” Dean sighed. “Thanks, though. I’ll let you know when I find him.”

“Of course.” 

As Dean was leaving, already down the steps and halfway to his car, she called out, “Wait!”

Dean turned.

“If, if you do find Sam,” she called, “can you, ah, can you tell him we miss him?”

“Yeah,” Dean told her, and something twisted in his chest, fierce and insistent that finding Sam was the most important task he’d ever given himself.

He wouldn’t ever stop looking, he knew, as he opened the Impala’s door and checked his list for the next address. It wasn’t as though he didn’t want to find Sam, God, finding Sam is all he’d ever wanted, but a part of him was tired of driving and motels and endless tasks. There were three more people for him to hit in California, but Dean wasn’t sure he wanted any of them to have the answer.

They didn’t, of course, though all of them affected variations on the same expression: concerned and upset but a little confused that after a radio silence of six years Sam was suddenly reentering their life, even if as a specter. When he closed the last door, Dean drove back to his motel outside Santa Monica and just sat with his head in his hands. He could call Lisa, should, really, she had called him twice and he had answered with short and clipped replies, tired and drawn and a little angry, but he couldn’t bring himself to actually pick up his phone.

What could he tell her except that he hadn’t found Sam, but wanted to more now than he had even in the first weeks when all he was able to do was mourn. She wanted him to come back, that much Dean heard in her voice, but Dean didn’t understand the idea of coming back; it was a custom foreign to hunters. You never came back. 

He spent that night awake, watching TV and wondering what he was going to do next.

Dean ended up at Bobby’s, of course, and steeled himself for the inevitable “I told you so,” but it didn’t come. Bobby got a little soft around the mouth and eyes and gave Dean a beer without saying anything. When they had finished the first round, he asked, “Where’d Cas go off to?”

“Hell if I know,” Dean said with a shrug. “I guess he figured I had it under control once we got to California.”

“Maybe,” Bobby grumbled. “I was actually thinking, boy, and have you thought about checking up around Cicero?”

“Near Lisa’s place?” Dean asked, with his own version of the bitchface. “Bobby, I’m not going to stop looking.”

“I wasn’t suggesting that,” Bobby snapped. “But you’re right about Sam wanting you to have that, so did you ever think he might be keeping an eye on you?”

“Oh.” Dean pulled a face. “Creepy, but Sam would probably do something like that.”

Dean followed Bobby’s advice, and checked himself in to the same hotel that he had graced with his presence the nigh he became a torturer. Luckily, the clerk was different this time around. Once he’d settled in he realized he didn’t know exactly where to check for Sam.

“Damn it, Cas, I thought you were going to help me with this,” he muttered.

“I am,” Castiel said from behind him and Dean very definitely did not jump a little. “It may surprise you, but I do have other duties.”

“Important Heavenly business?” 

“Things are not settling in as easily as Gabriel and I had hoped.”

“Gabriel? Gabriel’s calling the shots now?”

“Dean,” Castiel sighed, “Gabriel is an archangel, and as unorthodox as his behavior has been,” there Cas did allow himself to grimace, “he is thoroughly capable of exercising free will.”

“God wants angels with free will.”

“Yes,” Cas agreed. “After the recent debacle, He decided it was best. Something about forcing angels to recognize their own whims and not use His name in such a way.”

“Finally,” Dean grumbled, and Cas rolled his eyes. “So, uh how long are you back for?” He looked away under Castiel’s intense scrutiny, the strange softness his around his mouth when Dean asked.

“I am unsure. As long as Gabriel is capable of managing on his own.”

“I’m sure he’ll be fine. I figured I’d canvas the towns around Cicero to look for Sam. He wouldn’t actually stay here. Lisa or I might see him.”

“You’re not going to visit her?”

“You too?” Dean sighed. “Bobby gave me hell about it when I told him. It’s not worth it, Cas. I seriously doubt Sam’ll actually be here. Maybe he was months ago, or whenever he first got out, but not now. I’m not going to go back when all I’ll do is leave the next day. It’s not a hotel. I can’t do that to her.”

“You have already left once,” Castiel pointed out and, Dean shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger.

“You don’t get it, do you, Cas?”

“Apparently not,” Cas muttered.

“Don’t get your wings all ruffled about it. If I keep coming and going, it’s worse. Just, trust me on this.”

“Very well.”

That was the last time either of them mentioned Lisa, though she loomed large over their conversations for that entire week in Indiana.

Her presence only grew in the back of Dean’s mind, as he felt like more and more of an epic douche the more time he spent on the road. She still sounded sad and worn during the month and half he and Cas spent canvassing the Northeast. He called her while they were in Maine, where sort of knew Sam wasn’t, but he’d always wanted to try Maine lobster and Cas raised a disturbingly small number of complaints.

“Do you have any leads?” Lisa asked, when they had come down from Maine and were getting ready to meet Sarah Blake for dinner.

“We’re on the way to dinner with one, actually,” Dean said, rushed and uncomfortable in his nice clothes. From what he remembered it was very Sarah to make them meet her somewhere upscale, just to make Dean uncomfortable. He had actually liked her, had hoped for a brief hour that she and Sam would hit it off.

“You’re still with Castiel?”

“Yeah,” he told her, a weird half-grin on his face, “guess he figured he’d keep me in line as much as he could.”

“An impossible task, really,” Cas added.

Dean thumped him on the shoulder and could feel Cas stiffen as the Impala cruised through traffic with no hands on her wheel. 

“Hm? No,” Dean replied to Lisa, “a woman who had a haunted painting about five years ago. Well, we didn’t so much tell her has she found out. Little bit like you, actually. Sam had a thing for her. Chicks like that are his thing, I was thinking maybe he came up here to, like, watch her sleep or something. Sam would.”

“Chicks like what?”

“Smart chicks. Stanford did it to him probably. She could probably kick his ass, though, so at least he learned something.”

“From hunting?”

“Yeah.” Dean paused to wonder when exactly this conversation had turned from “where are you and what are you doing” to “tell me about your childhood, Dean, and maybe we could get to your mother today, too.” “You, uh, you don’t take up with anyone who can’t hold their own. Too risky.”

“Dean,” Lisa sounded like she did when she berated him for drinking too much, which he never really denied but certainly didn’t feel like changing, sort of sad and upset and completely breaking Dean’s heart.

“Listen, Lisa, I’ll call you when we’re done with dinner. Hopefully I’ll have heard about Sam by then.”

Cas looked at him slantwise as they walked into the restaurant, but Dean just held up his hand. Before Cas could sass him, and Dean knew he would, because the angel was beginning to develop his own version of Sam’s bitchface, Clearly, Dean was fated to be surrounded by people who didn’t appreciate his greatness.

Sarah practically mauled Dean when they walked in, much to their waiter’s confusion and Castiel’s very quiet amusement. 

“So,” she started, once they had settled down with drinks, “what exactly is going on with Sam?”

“He’s missing,” Dean started, and before he could explain the situation Sarah interrupted him.

“What?” Several other customers turned to looked at her, and she rolled her eyes, but ducked her head and continued more quietly. “What happened?”

“He’s fine,” Dean assured her, and then Castiel, apparently time-travelling back about two years to when he just opened his mouth and said things, busted out with,

“We suspect he is being hunted.”

“Damn it, Cas,” Dena hissed as Sarah’s eyes grew wide and pretty terrified. “We don’t know that,” he assured her, “but we can’t take any chances. That’s why we’re looking for him like this.”

“Why, exactly,” Sarah asked, “is Sam being hunted?” Dean didn’t really want to tell her. He’d never tried giving the whole Apocalypse spiel to anyone before, except Lisa, who got it in bits and pieces after sex or when something in Dean would shatter and it was all he could do to prevent himself from spilling everything to everyone he met. 

“Sam and I,” he started, and she leaned forward, “may have inadvertently started the Apocalypse. But we stopped it!” He added as her eyes grew comically large.

“You know what,” Sarah said, “this is going to require a few more drinks. Let’s go back to my place. You too,” she nodded at Castiel.

Dean almost felt like a scumbag for saying yes, and for letting Sarah pay for dinner, but it had been her idea and she was the wealthy one, after all, and Cas was going to be there so it wasn’t like he was going to get handsy, He had some self-control, and Sarah wasn’t exactly his type, anyway, and Sam would be so pissed if he found out.

They went back to Sarah’s anyway, because Dean was used to feeling like a scumbag and she probably had really nice drinks. On her couch Dean told her the whole story, and if maybe he tucked away certain things under his tongue or behind his ribs, before they ever got out of his mouth, well, she didn’t need to know the stench of Hell, not really. When he finished Sarah’s mouth was soft around the edges, turned down a little the way Lisa’s was the second night he dreamt of Hell, and she hugged him.

“I’m sorry doesn’t really cut it, does it?” She asked against his shoulder.

Dean met Castiel’s eyes over her head, but Cas didn’t offer him any help. He didn’t know what to tell her, that, no, no apology would ever be enough for either of the brothers Winchester, or that yes, just hearing it from someone meant something to him. He opened his mouth to tell her anything, and found himself laughing. Loud, endless whoops of something that sounded a lot like joy, until Sarah pulled away from him and Castiel wrapped fingers around Dean’s shoulder, and even then it wouldn’t stop.

The two of them sat there with him until he calmed down, his ribs and his cheeks arching, and Sarah raised an eyebrow. “Are you okay?”

“I think I am,” he told her, and that made her smile, “but we should probably get going. Still got almost half a country to cover. But I’ll, ah, I’ll have Sam call when I find him, if you want.”

“I’d like that,” Sarah said.

“Alright, great, well, I’ll probably be seeing you later, so,” Dean trailed off as he hauled himself up and opened the door. Sarah just rolled her eyes and waved him off, and Castiel loomed behind him. 

“Let’s go,” Cas whispered and Dean raised an eyebrow, but complied. 

Back at the hotel Dean slumped onto the bed and threw his arm over his eyes. “Sorry about that, Cas,” he mumbled.

“About what?”

“This whole evening,” Dean waved his free arm around. He didn’t apologize, not really, but Sarah had given him some absolutely exquisite liquor, and Lisa had put him on edge, and he was, frankly, tired of Cas’s lingering in silence.

“There’s nothing to apologize for, Dean.” Dean could see the look on Cas’s face without actually needing to move his arm: head tilted slightly, eyebrows furrowed, mouth a little tense. 

“So you’re telling me you enjoyed watching me lose my shit at Sarah’s,” Dean retorted.

“I did not enjoy it,” Cas said, “but that does not mean you need to apologize.”

“It kind of does, Cas, between that and talking to Lisa I can’t imagine how fucking awkward it was, but I bet angels don’t even understand the concept,” Dean trailed off. Even through the buzz of drunkenness he could tell that things were getting weird. Not, of course, that things weren’t always a little weird with Cas around.

The angel wasn’t speaking, and Dean wasn’t sure that he was even there anymore, but he took a shot in the dark and opened his mouth with the firm decision to ruin everything, because that was what Dean Winchester did. “I guess what I’m saying is, Cas, man, why are you still here? I’m doing what you want, I’m going to find Sam if he’s even able to be found. You never stuck around this much when it was the fucking end of the world. What’s going on?”

“Would you prefer it if I left?” That was Cas’s angel voice, cold and smacking of threats of Hell. Not that Dean really believed that Cas would actually toss him back, not anymore.

“No, that’s not what I meant. Dammit,” Dean pulled himself into a sitting position. “Cas, look, it’s just weird. You have all that important Heavenly business to handle and you’re down here, helping me look for Sam? I appreciate it, but come on, you have to admit it’s not like you.”

“I have always helped both you and your brother, at great cost to myself.” And, yeah, Dean had clearly fucked this up beyond belief because Castiel’s tone was approaching the one that he saved for very special occasions that usually involved beating the shit out off Dean.

“I know, Cas, I know.” Dean turned to look at Castiel for the first time since they started arguing. 

“Then why,” Cas asked, “are you asking me?”

“Because,” Dean stopped. “Winchesters don’t get gift horses.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand what you’re getting at, Dean.”

“Forget about it, Cas.”

-

Dean wasn’t sure if Cas actually forgot about their conversation, which was unlikely considering the fact that he was, you know, an angel, but they had some sort of unspoken agreement to never bring it up again that Dean was absurdly thankful for. They had gone back to Bobby’s after the Northeast had yielded up nothing more than dinner with Sarah, where Bobby had spend three days dancing around the suggestion that Dean go look for Sam in Lawrence.

“Sam wouldn’t,” Dean had said, but realized he was wrong. Dean would never go back to Lawrence, not with hell and high water at his back, but Sam may, because Sam always had weird thoughts about things, like reconnecting with his roots or something. Sam didn’t have the memories Dean did, of their burning house and cold grip of John’s hand on his shoulder as firefighters tried in vain to save Dean’s childhood.

That’s how Dean found himself on Missouri Moseley’s doorstep. He figured if he had to be in Lawrence he might as well try and actually make something of it. 

Even though she had obviously seen him coming she made him wait on the stoop for five minutes before she opened to door and offered him tea. Dean never had liked tea but he didn’t say anything because Missouri was being suspiciously nice. It was probably some kind of test.

“Sorry I left you out there for so long, honey. You’re a hard one to get a lock on.”

“Well, the Apocalypse, you know, things come up.”

“I’m sure. It’s been a hard two years for all of us, you Winchesters especially. I only wish I could help you more.”

“You can’t help me?”

“Sorry, Dean. I don’t know where Sam is, except that he’s not here and hasn’t been.”

“I guess I’m not that hidden from you after all,” Dean teased. He kept his eyes trained on Missouri, though, wary that she might kick him out.

“Don’t flatter yourself, Dean. You’re just transparent. What else would you be doing back in Lawrence?”

“I could be paying me respects,” Dean said, voice thick. Missouri only raised an eyebrow. “Fine,” Dean admitted, “I’m trying to find Sam.”

“Last I heard, your brother was down somewhere you couldn’t go.”

“Been there before.”

“And got out by the grace of God. Was Sam that lucky?”

“Grace of Castiel, actually,” Dean muttered. “I thought you liked Sam. Wouldn’t you want him to be alive?”

“Sam’s still my favorite Winchester, so don’t get your hopes up, boy, but I’m no fool. Coming back from the dead’s bad business in ordinary times. It’s not the end of the world anymore, Dean. Things are supposed to stay put.”

“Sam’s alive, I know it, and before you say anything, I know he’s not possessed.”

“Do you, now.” Missouri raised her eyebrow again, a delicate reproach. 

“Yeah, I do,” Dean told her, rising from his seat. “From the mouths of angels.”

“You trust this angel? I tried to keep out of all that Apocalypse fuss as best I could, but even I heard the angels weren’t to be trusted. Couple of hunters that passé this way said they were cold killers, bad as the devil himself.”

“Dicks with wings,” Dean agreed, and Missouri smacked the back of his head.

“Language,” she warned. 

“Sorry, sorry. But, not, this angel is different, trust me.”

“As long as you trust, I suppose I might. Good luck, Dean.”

He knew a dismissal when he heard one, so Dean saw himself out of the door. He figured he might as well go back to Bobby’s and give him an earful about just how bad an idea the Lawrence trip had been, when Bobby decided to apparently make Dean’s like easier and go ahead and call him.

“Bobby! What the fuck were you thinking sending me down to Lawrence?”

“Excuse me for tryin’ to help, Dean!”

“He wasn’t there, like I told you. Missouri couldn’t even tell me anything.”

“Well, boy, she won’t need to. That’s why I’m calling. Rufus just told me that Malcolm Porter—did you ever meet him? Knew Gordon and his lot—is heading down South. Have fun.” Bobby hung up with a click and left Dean to think over what he’d been told, alone.

Hunters, as a general rule, didn’t go down South unless they had personal stake in something going on, and very few hunters were actually Southerners. Dean himself had done a few jobs in Kentucky and West Virginia, near their northern borders, but had never really worked in the Deep South. (Louisiana was another matter, with its voodoo and hoodoo.) John had explained it to him, once, the reasons hunters let the South alone. It wasn’t as though nothing supernatural happened down South. If anything, strange happenings were more common there. The South had its own, though, who handled vampires and rugarus and the like, and didn’t take kindly to those who would intrude on its ways of dealing. As for haunting, well, John had said, the South remembers.

No one knew precisely why. Some said it was just old magic, deep in the land. Some said the South was drenched in blood in a way the North wasn’t, slavery and Civil War and the Trail of Tears. Others said it was because the South didn’t turn so fast to cities, but clung hard to the land. Salt and burn as much as you want, Dean had been told, but the land won’t ever let them go. The soul of the South is haunted.

Of course Sam would be there, Dean thought. He had almost known it since the beginning, that Sam would go to a place no hunter would, and set himself up amongst the ghosts. Just girly and melodramatic, while still sort of practical, to be Sammy, Dean laughed to himself. 

At the next opportunity, he turned the Impala around and headed South.

-

Castiel didn’t appear the night Dean spent in Tennessee, or at all during his drive into Georgia. Dean hadn’t even bothered with the rest of the South. If Sam did something, he did it all the way. He didn’t start second-guessing this impulse until he was a few hours outside of Savannah, basically parking on I-95. In the sweltering heat his whole plan seemed ridiculous, and even though he wasn’t moving more than a few inches every five minutes, he felt an overwhelming urge to turn around and search the entire South from top to bottom.

That, of course, was when Cas appeared. He just popped into the passenger seat and said, “Do not be so quick to doubt yourself, Dean.”

“So Sam is in Savannah?”

“I can’t be sure,” Castiel admitted, “but you of all people would be able to find him. There’s no harm in searching here first.”

“Right,” Dean said. He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel and traffic began to move a little faster, and then faster, until things were almost at a normal speed again. Dean looked over at Castiel, who had the hint of a smile on his lips.

“Was that,” Dean paused, “was that you just now?”

“You were saying it would take a minor miracle to get this traffic to move.” 

That kept Dean smiling the whole way into town, through his check-in at the Sandman Motel (“C’mon, Cas, with a name like that how can I not stay here!”) and about halfway through his first attempt at asking a motel clerk if a Malcolm Porter had checked in. Porter was from money, Dean had checked, so he’d never needed fake names for fake credit cards the way most hunters did.

The clerk at the Traveler’s Inn seemed barely capable of speaking English, Spanish, or any other language known to humans, so Dean had to distract her while Castiel stole the check-in sheet.

“This is not part of my job,” Cas bitched as they drove to the next place, two minutes down Ogeechee Road, which was apparently a buffet of shitty motels and shittier restaurants. 

“You have a job here?” Dean teased. “I thought you just kept me from getting too lonely.” And, yeah, Cas had definitely been practicing the bitchface while he was away. God, Dean thought, the two of them in the same room, the world might actually end under the collected force of their prissiness.

The image made him smile so hard his face hurt through the next four motels, even though Malcolm wasn’t staying at any of them. Dean was on the verge of stopping the car and forcing Cas to use some sort of angel mojo to track the guy down when he notice Arbor Cottages. It was one of those pay by the week places that most hunters avoided because they were rarely in place for long enough to make it worth it, but Dean figured he’d give it a shot.

As he and Cas were using the same bait and switch routine on the clerk there, who was deeply suspicious of Dean no matter how much charm he laid on, Cas tapped him on the shoulder and whispered, “There, that’s him, leaving now.”

Dean thanked the clerk in a rush and watched as a man, short but layered in muscle the way all hunters were, got into a truck. “You sure,” he hissed at Cas.

“Yes.”

“Well, let’s follow this sonuvabitch.” As soon as Dean was sure Malcolm couldn’t see them, he shoved Cas in the direction of the Impala, and did his best to follow Malcolm discreetly, or as discreetly as he could while driving a ’67 Impala. 

Either Malcolm Porter was a complete dumbass, something Dean wouldn’t put past somebody who went out to kill a guy without completely checking his fact, especially when that somebody’s brother was pretty much one of the most terrifying hunters out there, or he didn’t care that he was being followed by someone. Dean actually figured it was a combination of the two, and maybe a bit of Malcolm being too focused on the hunt, which Dean could understand since Sam as himself was a pain in the ass to fight, let alone Sam as worn by Satan.

They tailed Malcolm into downtown Savannah, where the narrow streets and constant traffic made Dean grit his teeth. He figured Sam would pick a part of town like this, sort of fruity and not at all the place any hunter would ever go unless a job forced him. Malcolm managed to find a parking spot, and when Dean realized he wouldn’t be able to fit the Impala in the only nearby space, he reached across Cas and opened the door. 

“Get out,” he told Cas.

“What?”

“Follow him while I find a parking place. Hurry up!” Dean shooed Cas out of the car, as the roughly twelve thousand people stuck behind all seemed to honk their horns in tandem. 

Cas did, grumbling, and Dean rolled his eyes are he went around what felt like a hundred squares and down about seventy back streets looking for parking. By the time he found a spot, he muttered to himself, he probably would have missed whatever went down.

Luckily, he found a spot large enough to accommodate the Impala, and parked like a complete jackass. Cas called a minute later, as Dean was headed back in what he was pretty sure was the right direction.

“We’ve found Sam,” Cas said, without preamble. Dean nearly tripped. “More accurately, we’ve found Sam’s room. He appears to be out.”

“Where are you?”

“He lives in an apartment over a CVS on Bull Street.”

“I think I remember that one. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

Cas was waiting for Dean on a corner near the CVS, and fell in step with him easily. “Malcolm’s up in Sam’s apartment. I assumed you would want the honor of surprising him.”

“You know me too well, Cas.” Dean grinned.

“I know you down to your bones, Dean Winchester.”

Dean had nothing to say to that, so he settled for the same intense stare that had characterized his and Cas’s relationship since the beginning. Being an archangel and earning Heaven’s approval had clearly done nothing to tamp down on Cas’s intensity, His eyes still cut through Dean, down to those bones he had marked and remade. It made Dean shiver.

They had to break eye contact while Dean tried to break in to the apartment, failing miserably until Cas reached across him and keyed in the passcode. 

“I saw Malcolm do it,” he offered as explanation. 

Dean just raised a finger to his lips as they crept up the stairs. Cas pointed out the door to Sam’s apartment, and Dean pulled out his gun. Cas reached for the knob and Dean stopped him, hand pressed against Castiel’s wrist. Cas raised a questioning eyebrow at him.

“He’s bound to be waiting for someone to come in. Is there a window or something?” Dean whispered in Castiel’s ear.

“No,” Cas responded, “but there is another way.” Dean knew what it was before Cas reached out with two fingers, heard it in the amused twist of Cas’s voice.

Malcolm obviously wasn’t expecting two men, one armed, to teleport into the room he had carefully booby-trapped. Dean had never been one for such elaborate set-ups, but he had to admit the careful system of strings and knives around the door was something else. While Malcolm scrambled to aim at Dean, Dean knocked his gun from his hand and gestured to the bed.

“Sit down, Porter. Cas, can you undo that mess he’s made by the door?”

“You actually need to ask?” Dean could have sworn Cas smirked as pulled on one of the strings and the entre web fell to the floor.

“So, Malcolm,” Dean dragged the name out, tested it on his tongue and prodded Malcolm in the stomach with the barrel of his gun, “what are you doin’ all the way this far south?”

“Don’t treat me like a fool, Dean Winchester, you know exactly what I’m doing. I’m putting down that rabid dog you call a brother.”

Dean struck Malcolm across the face with the butt of the gun before he could think. As Malcolm spat at him and held his cheek, Cas gripped his shoulder.

“You listen to me, you goddamn ignorant son of a bitch—” Dean was cut off by the opening door, and the sound of footfalls he’d known their entire life.

Behind him, he heard Castiel say, “Hello, Sam.”


	3. Chapter 3

Dean would have liked to say, later, that the reunion of the brothers Winchester consisted of a lot of manly backslapping, and that he boxed Sam’s ears or something and they agreed to stop being fucking dumbasses about everything. It did end up going a little like that, much later.

As it actually happened, Sam was a little confused and incredibly pissed off to come back to his apartment to find Dean and Cas standing over some stranger who had clearly just been pistol-whipped, and most likely by Dean.

Dean can’t actually say exactly what Sam said when he saw them; the whole thing is a mess of Sam shrieking about his privacy and God damn it can’t Dean let each of them have their lives and Dean trying to explain that Malcolm was going to kill Sam and if anything, he deserved an apology. The whole thing, which was on the brink of dissolving into a hissy slap-fight, ended when Cas stepped in between them two of them and just stood there. He didn’t touch them, or say anything, just let Sam and Dean rage on around him until the whole thing got too awkward. 

“If you’re done, both of you,” he growled, giving Sam and Dean each a dark look, “acting like children, there are more immediate problems.”

“Yeah,” Sam agreed, and Cas looked almost hopeful, but Dean saw the bitchface and knew exactly what was coming, “the stranger you were pistol-whipping in my room!”

“He was trying to kill you!” And before Sam could snap back with the same ‘I can look after myself’ shtick Cas sighed, and said,

“Dean’s right. Malcolm may have succeeded in killing you had we not intervened.”

Dean smirked. Sam’s bitchface (number 8) promised revenge later. “What do you suggest we do with him, Cas?”

“I had planned on explaining the situation to him calmly, but you handily ruined any chance we had of doing that.”

“What did you expect me to do? You heard what he said.” When Cas didn’t dignify that with a response, Dean said, “Can’t you give him revelation or something? Reveal the error of his ways and all that?”

“Sounds good to me,” Sam added. 

“I could,” Cas admitted. He tilted his head and regarded Malcolm for a long minute, while Malcolm flailed in place. Dean exchanged a confused look with Sam and shrugged, until it dawned on him that Cas had probably been holding Malcolm in place the whole time he and Sam had been arguing. So, yeah, maybe he had overreacted, but you wouldn’t catch him admitting that to Sam within the next five years.

Finally Cas moved forward and took Malcolm’s head between his hands and bent it forward. Malcolm tried to wrench away, but Dean caught his eye and shook his head; he remembered the strength of angels. Malcolm eventually stilled and Cas leaned forward to place his lips upon Michael’s forehead, and left them there for longer than Dean was comfortable with. When Cas pulled away Malcolm remained with his head bent forward, his breaths coming in a slow, even pattern.

“It is done,” Cas said, “we can leave.”

“Whoa, whoa, wait a minute,” Sam said, hands held up. “I live here, you know. I paid my rent and everything.”

“Sam, dammit, I’ve spent months looking for you, I’m not just leaving you here.”

Sam pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “Dean, I left you alone for both our goods, you know. You deserve a life with Lisa, and, Dean, I just want to rest.”

“I’m not hunting, Sammy. I went looking for you because Cas told me you might be in danger,” Dean said.

“Dean,” Sam started, but Dean shook his head.

“Figure yourself out, Sam. I’ll be in town for a couple of days.”

Cas was waiting outside Sam’s door, with the same blank expression he used to weather most of the apocalypse. Dean just shook his head and said, “Come on, help me find where I parked the Impala. Wasn’t paying too much attention to the signs at the time.”

And then Sam came barreling out of the CVS and said something to the effect of, “Jesus, fine, Dean, I’m am so sick of this bullshit,” and then the manly backslapping commenced. It only lasted for a few minutes because, while Dean could tolerate that kind of thing in private, any sort of public display of genuine affection made his skin crawl. It was probably some sort of allergic reaction produced by all of his testosterone. He thought he heard Cas mutter, “Oh thank, God,” but that must have been some sort of feelings-induced hallucination, since Cas would never take the Name in vain.

“Seriously, though, Dean,” Sam said as he steered them through downtown Savannah, “how are things with Lisa?”

“Well, she hasn’t gotten rid of me yet,” Dean said with a shrug. “I don’t know, Sam, you know I’m not cut out for that kind of life. It took me months to learn to sleep for more than four hours a night, and then your favorite angel put an end to that pretty quickly.”

“Lucifer?” Sam yelped, and, yeah, that turned a few heads. Dean laughed and nodded. 

“Michael, too,” he said, and Sam’s eyes widened gratifyingly. 

Dean told Sam the story of his season in Hell all the way to the diner Sam had insisted had the best diner food he’d tasted in years. The Pankake Palace was a hole in the wall kind of diner, with red plastic booths and a line of stools at the counter, and a checkered interior, like something out of the fifties, but dirty, now.

“That’s when Cas showed up?” Sam asked as they slid into a booth. 

“Yeah,” Dean agreed. “He told me—what did you tell me Cas? And come on, sit down, don’t just stand there, you’re getting in the way—anyway, yeah, that’s when Cas showed up.”

Cas took the seat next to Dean. “Heaven is fond of symmetry.”

“What?” Sam asked.

“That’s what I told Dean,” Cas explained, as the waitress brought coffee for Sam and Dean. They ordered; dean got a burger and Sam got pancakes and Cas just shook his head, and the waitress smiled at Sam like she knew him.

“She’s cute, Sammy,” Dean said, smirking.

“Dean, seriously? We’re friends. I’m not,” Sam sighed, “I’m not going to do anything like that, not until I’ve put more time between me and Hell.”

“You might want to think about that one again, because guess who I talked to while I was looking for your sorry ass all over the lower forty-eight?”

“Who, Dean?” Sam asked. He rolled his eyes towards Castiel, who only raised an eyebrow.

“Sarah Blake. You remember her, don’t you? Aw, you do!” Dean teased as Sam struggle valiantly against the blush rising on his cheeks. “Anyway, she wanted me to have you call her when I found you. I’ve got her number and everything.” He scribbled it on a napkin and shoved it across the table to Sam, who pocketed without a word, but while doing a damn good impression of a tomato.

He made a couple of pretty weak attempts at asking Dean how things were with Lisa, which Dean, obviously refused to acknowledge. The awkwardness vanished after that. They became brothers again, whose whole lives had revolved around each other since they could remember. Cas even talked; after a little prodding (read: Dean wouldn’t shut up about it) he finally told them what he exactly he did upstairs. 

“Gabriel and I,” Cas started, and Sam immediately interrupted. Dean rolled his eyes, he could have told Cas that would happen; Sam was about as fond of Gabriel as Dean was. 

“Gabriel’s alive?” Sam squawked.

“Yes,” Cas told him, in the same even, measured tones he had told Dean. “Gabriel, I’m sure you remember, helped us a great deal.”

“Yeah, after messing with us about as much as Satan,” Sam muttered. “And he killed Dean, like, a hundred and twenty times!”

“Yeah, I wasn’t exactly thrilled to hear he’s back, either,” Dean said.

“Gabriel was restored to life, and to his archangel role in Heaven, but,” Cas stopped and looked both of them in the eye, “he is not permitted the same…indulgences that I am.”

“Indulgences?” Dean asked. “Cas, you’re practically the last person who would indulge in anything.”

He got a look from both of them for that, but Cas answered, “Earth. Gabriel is forbidden from leaving Heaven, for the time being. He has proven too flighty to be allowed much freedom.”

“I’m sure he’s a real peach, with all that,” Dean said and rolled his eyes.

“He has been crueler than most situations warrant.”

“Isn’t that the sort of thing you guys want to prevent?” Sam asked.

“Yes,” Cas sighed, “and that is why I am there.”

“Can you really afford to take all this time off, then?” And Dean was going to kill Sam himself, even if he wouldn’t let Malcolm do it, because Sam, who’s perfectly good and talking and wheedling and convincing and all that, has never known when to shut his goddamn mouth.

“Things are not so dire in Heaven,” Cas said, and added, as he looked away, “that I am forbidden this.”

After that conversation mostly stalled, but the meal was winding down anyway, and Sam had caused him so much trouble that he had no problem with pushing Cas out of the booth and winking at Sam. “Thanks for lunch, Sammy.” He grabbed Cas’s wrist and walked off before Sam could make anything more than an indignant noise in the back of his throat.

Outside, in the shimmering heat of the Savannah summer, that reminded Dean why he loved the bleak middle of the country, where at least the air never filled with water this way, once he had gotten far enough away from the diner that he didn’t think Sam would come looking and demand money, he turned to Castiel. “So, Cas,” he got out, and then he sort of stalled. Cas only stared at him, so Dean inhaled sharply and kept going, “thanks. For all this, I mean, for finding Sam and not making me do it alone and, God, I don’t know. Everything.”

Cas smiled and Dean realized he was still holding Cas’s wrist. He didn’t drop it till Cas had said, “you’re welcome.”

 

It took longer to find the Impala than Dean was entirely comfortable with, but they found her in the end, unmolested on a side street. Cas fluttered off to Heaven and Dean muddled his way through a series of squares and finally got back to the Sandman.

Once there, his phone sat on the table, accusing. 

Dean didn’t deal with accusation well. 

“Lisa,” he said when she picked up, “I’m in Savannah.”

“Long way from New York.”

“Hunters don’t go down South much. Figures Sam would end up hiding away here.”

“You found him?” She sounded genuinely happy, excited.

“Yup, happy as a goddamn clam. Made him buy me lunch for all the trouble.”

“Are you headed back, then?” That was when Dean perked up, because something in her tone was forced. He ran through a million scenarios in his head, each worst than the last before he answered. 

“Actually, Lisa, look, I just found Sam, and it’s been a long time since we’ve been able to be brothers, and I know it’s been a long time,” he trailed off.

“It’s fine, Dean,” Lisa sounded sad in the same soft way she had when Dean told her what he had about Hell. “I’ve been doing some thinking since you left. It has been a long time, and Dean,” her voice broke, “Dean, I can’t do this. I can’t wait for you to decide you’re ready for this.”

“Lisa,” Dean started, but she kept talking, and her voice was thick with tears though Dean never actually heard he cry.

“I’m not twenty anymore, Dean, I’m a mother and an adult and, Dean, it’s just, we had a weekend.” Here Lisa paused and sniffed. “I know you and Ben get on so well, I don’t mind if you came see him, he’d probably love that, but, Dean, you don’t need to come back.”

“Alright.” He didn’t know what else to say to her. Dean had always told Sam he wasn’t cut out for normal life, but deep, deep inside he’d always hoped he was wrong about that as he was about so many other things. Of course, of course he’d be right. 

“Do you,” Lisa cleared her throat, “do you need anything from the house?”

“I’ve got everything.”

“Really? You only took a duffel.”

“Duffel’s all a hunter needs,” he told her.

“Oh, oh, okay.”

They sat on the line then, for what felt like an hour just breathing, until Lisa finally said, “Dean, I’m sorry, I am, and I did love you, in a way, but it’s just,” she stopped. “I’m sorry. I have to go.”

 

The aftermath was nothing like Dean had ever experienced. With Cassie there had been anger and sorrow, but mostly the hard edge of “I told you no one would believe you, no one would take a hunter, no one normal.” But Lisa had known, Lisa hadn’t cared, Lisa had seen him go through Hell again, and he’d managed to fuck it up.

He didn’t know if he had loved her, but he had loved the idea of her: dinner at seven and a kid and sleeping eight hours a night. Sam had hidden himself in the hot lap of the South to give him that, and he’d gone and thrown it all away. Dean didn’t even really want to drink; while it would make him feel better, it would also make him feel good enough to call Lisa, and, oh, yeah, maybe this was why she wanted to end things.

In the end, he did have a beer, but with the three dollar barbecue from across the street that was way better than it had any right to be, and pulled him way too far out of his funk for his inner thirteen year old girl’s liking. Dean had always had a thing for food.

And, because the universe was conspiring to prevent him from having as awful of a day as he thought he was, well, excluding the fact that he found Sam again, which sort of made it one of his top ten days, ever, Dr. Sexy was running on Bravo or some shit network like that which always made Dean feel like a complete girl. 

He ended up passing out somewhere around the seventh hour and woke up to his cell phone ringing directly into his face.

“What?” Dean grumbled, scrubbing his face with his free hand.

“Morning to you too, Sunshine,” Sam chirped. Dean didn’t know what time it was, but it was way too dam early for Sam to be this chipper.

“Sam? What the hell?”

“Dude, Dean, it’s like, ten-thirty. Were you still asleep?”

“That a crime, now?”

“No,” Sam admitted, “but you never sleep this late. What’s going on?”

“Never been allowed to sleep this late, you mean,” Dean muttered. 

“Seriously, Dean,” Sam said, and got that super serious tone he always did when he decided to talk about Dean’s deeply, deeply repressed feelings. Dean felt nauseous.

“Sam,” he started, but before he got another syllable out Sam sighed and Dean knew he was three seconds away from making Cas bring Dean to his apartment or something, so they could have this conversation face to face, so Dean chose the lesser of two evils and nutted up. “Lisa called last night,” he told Sam.

Sam, for once, didn’t say anything.

“She’s, uh, she’s done with me. I mean, she did try to be nice about it, she’s not a bitch or anything, so don’t really blame her for it. It was all me. I mean, I have been gone for months,” Dean said, and stopped. He had nothing else to say, not really. He could hear Sam breathing on the other end of the line.

“Wow, Dean,” Sam’s voice was weird sounding, too soft, and shaken, “I don’t t know what to say.”

“Don’t say anything, bitch.”

“Fine, you jerk,” Sam said, and for a moment Dean thought he was actually pissed, but he added, “come over here.”

“I swear to God, Sam, if you think we’re going to have some sort of girl-talk thing,” Dean started.

“What? No. Dean, I’m not actually a girl. You do know that, right?”

Dean hummed into his phone and hung up. He was going to do exactly what Sam had asked, of course, but he didn’t have to soothe Sam’s gender confusion, too.

 

When he finally found a parking spot somewhere within a two mile radius of Sam’s apartment, because apparently the entire city had decided to park right there, and was a block away from the CVS, Sam barreled into him. 

“Turn around, we’re having breakfast.” It was an order, so Dean just rolled his eyes and followed Sam through a series of increasingly picturesque shoes to Clary’s, where Sam winked at the hostess and got them seated before Dean could start complaining about the kind of places that made you actually wait to sit down.

Their waitress was a typical Southern blonde: bright and tan, all smiles and crinkled brown eyes while she took their orders and flirted shamelessly with Sam. Dean was almost insulted, but Sam had clearly been putting a lot of work into the girl, so he let it slide.

“French toast, Dean? You’re going to die of a heart attack before hunting gets you.”

“I crawled back out of Hell, Sammy, I’m not going to get taken out by some freaking toast.”

“Actually,” Sam pointed out, gesturing at Dean with his straw, “Cas pulled you out.”

“Don’t be a bitch, Sam.”

Sam only rolled his eyes and put his straw back in his drink. “So, Lisa,” he started, and when Dean made a face that he knew looked like a deer in headlights Sam rolled his eyes. “Calm down, would you? I’m not going to make you talk about your feelings. Wouldn’t want you puking all over your toast.”

“So what about her?”

“We’re going fishing.” Sam said it with so much pride that Dean didn’t have the heart to tell him fishing had nothing to do with Lisa.

“Great?”

“You like fishing,” Sam insisted, “It’s, like, your happy place or something.”

“What?”

“Don’t play dumb, Cas told me about that dream you have where you’re just sitting on a dock, fishing. Sounds nice,” Sam admitted with a shrug.

God, for once, or twice, or something, but who’s counting, apparently decided to cut Dean a break, because before Sam could say anything else ridiculous, their waitress rounded the corner, bearing French toast and a reprieve for Dean. Sam knew that mealtime, or at least the part where there was still food left on the table, was a strict no-bullshit zone.

The toast was stuffed with peanut butter and bananas, so bursting with fat and cholesterol and whatever else Sam will undoubtedly yell at him about that he could actually taste it. He loved it. 

Sam grinned at him over his seafood omelet, showing a few too many teeth for anyone’s comfort, really, and said round a mouthful, “Told you this place was good.”

“No you didn’t,” Dean told him through an even bigger mouthful, “you just sort of shoved me around.”

“Same thing.”

They didn’t talk again until they were done. Sam waved the waitress over for the check and ended up chatting with her for what felt like forever, while Dean contemplated escaping before he remembered that Sam knew the city better than he did, and, also, probably wouldn’t even let him make it out of the restaurant. 

“You’re paying, right?” Dean asked once the waitress had left, her whole face bright like Georgia sun, “Since you’re enjoying yourself so much.”

“Shut up,” Sam muttered, but his ears turned red and he did pay.

Outside, he asked Dean where the Impala was, and told Dean he’d meet him there. He did, too, but only after Dean spent something in the order of twenty minutes slowly melting into a puddle of, like, repression and badass right on the sidewalk.

Sam carried two fishing poles with him, and a tackle box that looked like something out of Dean’s nightmares. 

“Old fortune teller gave it to me when I got here,” Sam explain with a shrug, “and I didn’t really know how to say no.”

Dean pushed aside the inevitable joke, and eyed the poles. “How’re you gonna get those in my baby, without jabbing me in the back of the head.”

“They’ll fit just fine,” Sam sighed.

 

He was right, too, Dean had to admit, as he drove in a direction his internal compass told him was mostly south but somehow a little east, too. The heat of the South clung to him, dragged him down, and he didn’t like it, didn’t trust it. Sam seemed at peace with it though, one hand out of the window and skimming through the air and his ridiculous hair whipping around his face, and a grin on his face that made Dean think of a big, shaggy dog, like a Labrador or a St Bernard.

Sam had him pull over by the foot of a bridge, and before Dean could even point out that the bridge was too high and apparently pretty heavily trafficked, Sam pointed out a small span of bridge, thin and metal and much closer to the water.

“Why do you always have to be so negative?” Sam moaned and Dean turned to look at him.

“I’m the negative one, Sammy? Seriously? Don’t make me start.”

“Point,” Sam admitted. “But, seriously, Dean, I know this Lisa thing is probably tearing you up and if you want to rip yourself to shreds over it, then I guess there’s nothing I can do about it, but you’re not some consumptive Regency heroine trapped in the garret with only her ruined virtue to keep her company in the cold, dark world.”

Dean looked at Sam, face blank mostly because he didn’t even know what sort of reaction to have to Sam’s outburst. Judging from the way Sam was cycling between angry bitchface, sarcastic bitchface, the puppy dog eyes, and the general, confused face, he didn’t either.

Dean settled for, “I don’t even know what the fuck a garret is.”

Sam turned a color somewhere between eggplant and tomato, and Dean took a pole and the demonic tackle box while Sam tried to figure out how to form words.

“Is that really all you’ve got to say for yourself, Dean?” Sam spluttered when he eventually settled in next to Dean on the bridge.

“Yeah, Sammy, it is,” Dean said, with an edge in his voice that warned Sam to back off.

“Fine,” Sam snapped, and he cast. Dean watched the arc of his line across the sky, the flash of the hook with its sad bit of frozen shrimp plopping into the water. 

They just fished, in the sort of silence they used to have when they were twelve and eight, or nine and five, in the backseat of the Impala, while the deep and heavy heat of Savannah pressed against their clothes and wormed its way under their skin, and the sun mounted higher and higher into the sky. Sam caught a trout and Dean caught a bigger one, and that dissolved into a petty argument before Dean even really landed the thing.

Sam put his pole down with a huff, and said, “I’m going to go get fresh bait, give me the keys.”

“It isn’t going to make you any better, you know.”

“Shut up,” Sam grumbled, but Dean offered the keys and Sam took them.

Alone, Dean took a pull from one of the beers Sam had, surprisingly, had the sense to bring, and watched the bob of his cork along the river. He’d already shed his jacket when the sun had been at its peak, but Dean couldn’t imagine how people actually lived in this weather, let alone wore jeans. At least a breeze was finally kicking up, not that they couldn’t have used that like an hour and a half ago.

Dean had never really cared for the South, those few times they had skirt around its edges, and he blamed the heat, usually, because he could deal with the cold—you just put on a fucking jacket and a pair of thick socks and tough it out—but when it got hot like this he had no idea what you did except simultaneously throw yourself into the ocean and lock yourself in an air conditioned room.

If he had to be completely honest about it, though, even though Sam seemed weirdly content and well-adjusted, the South creeped him the fuck out. Maybe it had everything to do with the fact that Sam didn’t remember Kansas, and Dean did, and he wasn’t accepting any of that ‘Kansas isn’t in the South’ bullshit, because the Midwest and the Great Plains areas didn’t make him feel like something was crawling underneath his skin. Still, if Sam wanted to spend a few more days in Savannah, Dean was willing to let him. This deep into the roiling, barely-contained madness of the South, he almost couldn’t notice it, in the way you didn’t notice corn after the first few miles through Illinois farmland. 

He was absentmindedly waving at a cloud of gnats—yet another reason he wasn’t staying here longer than Sam forced him to—when the bugs seemed to lose interest. Dean looked up, already wary because it must have been something supernatural to drive gnats away, and there was Castiel.

He leaned against the railing next to Dean, his gaze trained out over the water. Dean waited, and when it didn’t seem like Castiel had anything to say, Dean cleared his throat and said, “You’re missing your coat.”

Not stellar, but he wasn’t really at the top of his game.

Cas made a soft noise that was almost amused. “Sam suggested I leave it behind. He said it would look suspicious.”

“In this heat? Yeah, it would,” Dean agreed. Then, “Wait? When did Sam warn you about your coat?”

“I saw him this morning, before you met him.”

“Cas,” Dean started, and before he continued he pulled in a few harsh breaths through his nose, trying to calm down, “was this your idea? Did you put Sam up to this? I’m not some fragile little girl, you know, I don’t know where you guys got that impression—“ He probably could have kept going in the vein for hours, even though he knew all he was doing was digging himself a hole so deep that it would save Lucifer and Michael all the work of getting around Cas’s sigils.

“No, Dean,” Cas told him, “Sam thought of this himself. And,” he added, giving Dean something like the evil eye, “I did not tell him about Lisa.”

Dean let out a sigh. “Go on, then. Do you want to tell me what an idiot I was, too?”

“If anything, Dean, I should be apologizing. It was I who asked you to leave in the first place.”

“I was the one who agreed,” Dean countered.

“It was not a thing you would have said no to,” Cas pointed out, and Dean nodded.

“Still, Cas, even if you got me to leave, I was the one who screwed it up. Not calling, not stopping by, that was all me.”

“Did you ever think that maybe,” here Cas paused and Dean was painfully aware of the way he licked his lips, quick, human, “that was not where you belonged.”

A line of tension ran down Castiel’s back, so Dean caught his eye, deliberately, before he answered. “Yeah, I do, all the time, but what else is there gonna be for me, Cas?”

Cas only stared at him, but there had never been an “only” in Cas’s stares. He and Dean stared at each other in a way that, when Dean looked back on it, was completely ridiculous. People didn’t look at each other like that, and, okay, Cas wasn’t people, but none of the angels had ever looked at anyone like that. Because it was a ridiculous, intense, meaningful stare, and Cas could keep it focused on him without even blinking for forever, so Dean was on the way to saying or doing something monumentally stupid when Sam used the gift of barging in that God gave all little brothers for good, finally.

“Hey, Cas,” Sam said, as he wedge himself past the two of them, carrying two chairs and a couple of bags. “Sorry, I didn’t know you were coming, so I only brought two chairs.”

“It is fine.”

“Here,” Sam said over his shoulder, “sandwich.”

“Subway, Sammy, really?”

“Shut up, it was on my way. So, Cas” Sam deliberately turned his head away from Dean and Dean rolled his eyes, “how long are you here?”

“It depends.”

“On?”

“Gabriel,” Cas sighed. “Currently, my presence is not required in Heaven, but I have learned to assume that Gabriel is plotting something at all times.”

“Took you this long?” Dean asked, and regretted it immediately when Cas turned his attention back to Dean and Dean’s mouth went dry.

“I had hoped that his resurrection, proof of Our Father’s favor, would make him less…”

“Malicious?” Sam offered, the same time as Dean suggested,

“Less of a douchebag?”

“Something like that,” Castiel agreed. “He is still difficult.”

“Can’t you just smite him with your new and improved angel powers?” Dean asked.

“I may be significantly more powerful than before, but Gabriel is still an archangel. His age and experience far exceed mine, and he is certainly creative.”

“That’s a word for it,” Sam agreed.

“But you’re sticking around until Gabriel actually blows shit up, right?” Dean asked. He hoped he didn’t sound needy, but the look Sam gave him pretty much squashed that.

“Yes,” Cas told him. Dean was pretty sure there was something like a smile in the curve of Cas’s lips.

“Good,” Sam said, and Dean had to remind himself that he had gone looking for Sam, and he loved his little brother even when he was barging in on things that may or may not be construed as moments. “You can help me with this idiot,” Sam continued, “since know he thinks he doesn’t have anything to do with himself.”

“I tried following your advice,” Dean snapped, “and look how that turned out.”

“Excuse me for wanting you to be happy,” Sam retorted. “I was wrong, okay, I admit it, the Lisa thing was better in theory and, you know, at the end of the world, than it was in practice, but you’re not making things any easier, you know.” Dean opened his mouth to give Sam a piece of his mind, but Sam just barreled on, “Yeah, you can blame yourself, and yeah, you probably should because you failed on, like, the basic fucking level of remembering she existed, but isn’t that a sign? You were pretty content on the road, it sounded like. Seriously,” Sam made a pissed off noise in the back of his throat, “Dean, you’re not going to die alone at the age of forty. Things are looking up, pull your head out of your ass.” When Dean thought he was finally done, Sam added, “And now I’m done with this. Cas, he’s your problem.”

“When hasn’t he been,” Castiel muttered, and both Winchesters stared at him.

“Did you just make a joke?” Dean asked.

“Gabriel is not entirely useless,” Cas told him and Dean grinned.

“I don’t know,” he teased, “I’m not sure if I like you running me down with those new skills. I guess it is better than you beating me up in an alleyway, though.”

“I gave up everything for you, Dean, do you really think I would honestly disparage you?”

“Cas,” Dean said, “it was a joke. Gabriel not cover that part? I know,” he added, voice softer.

Cas looked him up and down, just a quick flicker of his eyes, but after spending practically two years in a staring match with him, Dean knows when Cas’s eyes aren’t locked on his.

“Look,” Sam said, and that was two strikes against him, so he had better find the best pie in Savannah or Dean would, well, Dean would put Nair in his shampoo and then he wouldn’t even be able to hide the abomination that was his forehead, “not like I’m against this, I mean, I’m all for it, but could you keep the flirting for when I’m not around?”

“Dude, what the hell? We’re not flirting.”

“Uh, yeah, you are,” Sam said. With a flick of his wrist, he cast and the line soared past Dean. 

“Cas, tell him, we’re not.” When Dean tried to look over at Cas, the angel ducked his head, clearly avoiding eye contact. “Cas?”

“Told you,” Sam sing-songed. When Dean didn’t respond, he looked up and assumed bitchface number fourteen: you’re a dumbass. 

“You really didn’t know, Dean?”

“Know what?”

Sam just stared at him, and his bitchface intensified. Behind Dean, Cas cleared his throat.

“Sam may be referring to the fact that I have feelings for you,” Cas said. He sounded embarrassed, which would normally be a big thing for Dean, in his apparently ongoing quest to humanize an angel of the Lord, but that was overshadowed by the fact that Cas had effectively declared his undying love for Dean. 

He tried to force some sort of response out, at least some sort of anger or manly dismissal, but literally nothing came to mind.

“It’s pretty obvious, man,” Sam added from somewhere beyond the scope of Dean’s perception.

The thing about Cas, for Dean, was that Cas had this amazing and sort of annoying ability to give Dean a case of tunnel vision rivaled only by his relationship with Sam. He’d given as much thought to that as he ever gave anything, that is, enough to know that Cas meant something to him, and to be relieved when Cas had come for him back at Lisa’s, enough for Cas to become one of the constants in Dean’s life.

He already had his brother, Bobby as father-figure when John fell into the earth, so he never really thought twice about the way Cas sort of filled this life-partner void. Dean Winchester may not have been secure in his worth as a human being, but he knew he was more of an all-around badass than pretty much anyone else he would come across.

Not all of this actually ran through Dean’s head as he looked at Cas, but it came together for the first time, and so Dean resolutely ignored Sam’s presence and pressed forward.

Kissing Cas, at first, was like kissing anyone else: lips, teeth, tongue and the slow slide of two bodies against one another, until Cas pulled himself together enough to really respond and then, then it was like trying to kiss lightning. Cas was stronger than Dean, and he let it show, sloppy, as he maneuvered Dean against the railings of the bridge and only Sam’s hunter’s reflexes saved the fishing pole from falling.

Cas didn’t know exactly what to do with his hands, or his tongue, he moved them awkwardly, but he learned absurdly fast, and even in his clumsiness he was never shy. Dean was pretty sure his knees were going to turn into jelly or he was going to fall off of the bridge by the end of what was supposed to be just a kiss. Not, of course, that there was ever a “just” with Cas.

Dean pulled away slowly, freeing himself inch by inch from Cas’s unsurprisingly iron grip. Over Cas’s shoulder he could see Sam, who was covering his face but also staring at them through his fingers. Dean grinned at Cas and raised his eyebrows at Sam who took the hint and stopped staring, but rolled his eyes.

Dean collected his pole and baited it with one of the fresh shrimp Sam had brought, cast and settled against the rail, Cas a solid warmth against his side.

 

All in all Dean stayed in Savannah for two weeks, mostly because Sam insisted it would be a good idea for them to have a vacation, even after Dean pointed out that the past year had basically been one long rest. Still, Sam wouldn’t budge on the issue, so Dean gave in and ended up on Sam’s couch. 

“No point in paying for a hotel room,” he pointed out.

“Fine,” Sam agreed, “but I swear, if you have sex on my couch I’ll summon Gabriel and let him help me decide what to do with you.”

“You hate Gabriel.”

“I know,” Sam told him, so Dean figured he’d respect Sam’s wishes for once. 

It wasn’t difficult, since Cas had somehow acquired relatively normal but completely anti-Winchester (mostly Dean) view that sex was a big, emotional Thing. “You’ve been talking to Sam, haven’t you,” Dean accused, sitting up forcing Cas to climb off of him, which was incredibly depressing but within the apparent theme of the entire encounter.

“It’s more that he talks to me,” Cas said. “I just happen to listen.”

“You grow out of it,” Dean reassured him, and ran his hand up the line of Cas’s jaw.

 

Later, Sam cornered him while Cas was gone and asked, “Are you serious about this thing with Cas?”

“What?”

“Look, I know he can look after himself and I’m not like, his brother or anything, but twelve hours is a pretty impressive turnaround time.”

Dean didn’t even want to dignify that with a response; he was an asshole, yeah, but he wasn’t that much of one. As he shouldered his way past Sam, his little brother grabbed his arm and wrenched him still. 

“Fine,” Dean spat, “yes, I’m serious. Let’s never talk about this again.”

“Fine,” Sam sounded about three seconds away from actually sticking his tongue out, “I don’t actually enjoy playing Dear Abbey with you, you know.”

Dean made a noise in the back of his throat.

“Like, I’m not your little sister,” Sam said, and he sounded earnest and serious enough that Dean had to crack a smile, and Sam rolled his eyes.

“Can I call you Abbey anyway?”

“Dammit, Dean.”

 

Cas, in an impeccable display of his simultaneously amazing and awful sense of timing, zapped into the Impala just as Sam, leaning against the door and skimming his hand through the thick summer air, asked, “So is Cas a homewrecker, or what?”

Dean choked on his laughter, and when he looked up his eyes caught Cas’s in the rearview mirror and only years of dangerous driving saved him from a head on collision. 

“I don’t seem to recall having destroyed any homes,” Cas said, once Sam had stopped shrieking and Dean’s hands had stopped shaking.

“What?” Dean asked. 

“That’s,” Sam managed, “that’s not exactly what homewrecker means.”

“No,” Dean said, “no, we are not going down this road.”

“Why not?” Cas asked.

“Because now I’m picturing you with some twenty-year old girl as your vessel, you know what I’m talking about, Sammy?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Sam agreed, “blonde and tan—“

“With the dark eye makeup—“

“And, well, you know,” Sam made a gesture around his chest that Dean knew meant “absolutely massive breasts.”

Cas glowered from the back seat. Dean thought about explaining, but that sort of look could only mean bad news for him, and he figured that he’d been in enough deep holes during his lifetime without having to dig this one, too. 

Sam, clearly, did not think the same way.

“Basically, a homewrecker is someone who lets or convinces someone else who’s already in a relationship to cheat on their significant other.”

“I didn’t do that,” Cas told him.

“No,” Sam agreed, but Dean knew, from his tone and the way his mouth quirked up, that he wasn’t going to let this go anytime soon, “but you did convince Dean to leave Indiana.”

“Sam,” Dean warned, “let it go. It wasn’t the right place for me, anyway. I would have left eventually. Hell, Lisa probably would have kicked me out anyway.”

“Yeah,” Sam said with a shrug. “It’s just a funny image, a homewrecking angel.”

Dean shrugged and Cas’s reflection lost the tension around its mouth. “You got any more pressing questions for us, Sam?”

“Nope, I’m good,” Sam told him with a shiteating grin, and leaned back. “I’m going to sleep, don’t do anything to me.”

“Me?” Dean questioned, wide eyed. Sam just glared at him through one open eye.

After twenty miles Sam settled into sleep, complete with little whistle-snores. Dean reached out and turned down the music (Dylan, strange for him but not for the mood of the day, hot and hazy and rambling). 

“Hey.” He caught Castiel’s eyes in the mirror again.

“Hello,” Cas replied. A smile danced around his eyes and lips. “Where are we going?”

Dean ducked his head to hide a grin, but he can still feel it threatening to split his face apart, crinkling the edges of his eyes and spreading warmth down his spine. “Bobby’s first. He’s already going to kill me for not telling him I found Sam right away, might as well try not to make it any worse.”

“A good idea,” Cas said.

“After that?” Dean went on, “Who knows? Anywhere. Maybe we’ll settle down. You saw Sam, practically nested in Savannah. I’m thinking more in the Midwest, though. Near enough that I can visit Ben, you know? I think it’s time for us to stop hunting,” he confessed, “we’re tired, and,” he trailed off, “I don’t know. Hunting doesn’t feel right anymore, but I don’t know where to go from here.”

Behind him Cas exhaled and leaned forward. Dean felt his fingers brush the back of Dean’s neck, soft and warm as they curled through the short hairs there, a strange reassurance. 

“Wherever you go,” Cas told him, “there will be a place for you.”


End file.
